DAY 12 OF THE ZOE VOTE & …. TIDBIT DAY, W/JAPANESE!

I have a couple of tidbits I’ve been wanting to share with you, so get your pens and paper ready.

1. Congratulations to Professor Annette Gordon-Reed for winning prize after exquisite prize for her incredible, important, must-be-read-by-all-Americans book, The Hemingses of Monticello. In addition to taking last year’s National Book Award for Non-Fiction, and the Pulitzer for History earlier this year, it was recently announced that Hemingses was awarded the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, awarded for the best book written in English on slavery or abolition.

2. Christopher Moore, curator of the Schomberg Center and one of the generous vetters for Chains, has written a book with his eight-year-old son Matthew based on a 400 million-year-old boulder that is now in a park near their home in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. The book is not published yet, but the story has been turned into a musical, Matthew Takes Mannahatta, which opened last weekend. Bravo!

3. An independent bookseller (who is NOT my daughter) has written an open letter to all authors about the vital bookseller-author relationship. Please read it.

4. The first two books of my Vet Volunteers series have been translated into Japanese!!! Squeeeeeeeee!

Covers!!

 

  They have ILLUSTRATIONS!! How cool is that?

And that is all the Tidbits from the Forest today.

UPDATE ON THE ZOE VOTE AND THOUGHTS ON BREAKFAST TABLE READING:

I know you guys are getting sick of this, but the contest is almost over. Zoe still needs one vote a day, every day, if she is to stand a chance at winding up in abox of Cheerios next year.

When I was a kid, I lived in a house that had the most ridiculous rule in the world: no reading at the breakfast table. This meant that I read the cereal box obsessively. I can still recite way too many lists of ingredients.

When I grew up and became The Boss, I made a new rule: you MUST bring a book to the breakfast table. And now, because all the stars are lining up, one my books – THE HAIR OF ZOE FLEEFENBACHER GOES TO SCHOOL – could be the book that winds up on a million breakfast tables. This is most important to me because a lot of the kids who get a book in their cereal live in families who don’t have the extra money for books. Because of this fun contest, if they eat a good breakfast, they get a free book. That is pretty cool.

But Zoe still needs your vote. Please!

HOW TO VOTE:

1. Go to the voting page.

2. In the bottom right corner, click on MORE BOOKS twice. (Yes, this is the tricky part. No, I don’t know why Zoe is buried at the absolute back of the pack. Kind of makes you feel sorry for her, huh?) That will take you to ZOE.

3. Click on the yellow box that says VOTE!

4. Notify all of your friends, neighbors, family members, the folks at church or temple or mosque or other house of faith, the rest of the PTA, the people at the firehouse, everyone in your classroom, and tell them all pretty, pretty please with a headful of unruly red hair, PLEASE VOTE FOR ZOE.

5. Do this every day until the end of October. That is only a few more days!


TOMORROW: A FRIEND OF THE FOREST HAS DONE SOME RESEARCH ABOUT THE PROGRAM THAT SUPPLIES THE BOOKS TO THE CHEERIOS BOXES. HEART-WARMING AND FASCINATING!

 

DAY 11 OF THE ZOE VOTE & MY HERO, SARAH JOSEPHA HALE

Thank you all so very much for the lovely birthday wishes. It was a delightful and merry day and I loved hearing from all of youse guys.

Yesterday was also important birthday in the Forest: the 221st birthday of one of my all-time favorite Americans: Sarah Josepha Hale.

Yes, THAT Sarah Josepha Hale; the woman whom I wrote about in Thank You, Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving!

We’ve just updated the website to share new material with you about Sarah, including a birthday essay written about her by Queen Louise and a game. Check out the updates and tell me what you think!

UPDATE ON THE ZOE VOTE:

Thank you so much for voting once a day, every day! Last I heard, Zoe had moved back into fourth place. Fourth is a lovely place, indeed. But there are still seven days left in the voting, so this contest is not over, not by a long shot.

I am spending today in my writing cottage, working on this draft of my next historical, FORGE. If you want to cheer me on and encourage me to keep the words dripping from my fingertips, the best way you can do that is to vote. Please!

HOW TO VOTE:

1. Go to the voting page.

2. In the bottom right corner, click on MORE BOOKS twice. (Yes, this is the tricky part. No, I don’t know why Zoe is buried at the absolute back of the pack. Kind of makes you feel sorry for her, huh?) That will take you to ZOE.

3. Click on the yellow box that says VOTE!

4. Notify all of your friends, neighbors, family members, the folks at church or temple or mosque or other house of faith, the rest of the PTA, the people at the firehouse, everyone in your classroom, and tell them all pretty, pretty please with a headful of unruly red hair, PLEASE VOTE FOR ZOE.

5. Do this every day until the end of October.


COMING THIS WEEK: I MIGHT JUST DO SOMETHING EXTREMELY SILLY. PLUS, I THINK I’M GOING TO BE IN NEW JERSEY ON THURSDAY. BUT THE TWO THINGS ARE NOT RELATED. I THINK.

DAY 9 OF THE ZOE VOTE – MY BIRTHDAY!!!!

You know what we sing on this day in the Forest, dear friends….

::cues Ringo on drums, John on the guitar::

DA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA–NA–NA!
shooka-shooka-shooka
DA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA–NA–NA!
shooka-shooka-shooka

I SAY IT’S MY BIRTHDAY!

Yep. LOTS of candles on this one; too many to count. Guess this means I should be getting smarter any day now, right?

I am the birthday girl on the right; turning two years old and looking a bit wary about the idea. The cutie pie on the left is my cousin, Barrie Lyn, and that’s my suave Dad in the background.

I share my natal anniversary with a number of friends and authors and some friends-who-are-authors: Gordon Korman, Alex Flinn, Michael Crichton, Augusten Burroughs, Pele, Ang Lee, and the ever-adorable, Weird Al Yankovic.

Today is also Mole Day, which has to do with chemistry, not small critters who dig tunnels. And it is the beginning of the time of Scorpio (though some folks point to tomorrow and call today the "cusp.").

My plans for the day include writing, a long run, familyness, and pumpkin pie. (I am not terribly fond of cake.)

I know you’ve been so busy you haven’t had a chance to run out and get me anything. My birthday wish is simple and so inexpensive it is free.

WILL YOU PLEASE VOTE FOR ZOE AS MY BIRTHDAY PRESENT? PRETTY PLEASE WITH BIRTHDAY CANDLES ON TOP?

HOW TO VOTE:

1. Go to the voting page.

2. In the bottom right corner, click on MORE BOOKS twice. (Yes, this is the tricky part. No, I don’t know why Zoe is buried at the absolute back of the pack. Kind of makes you feel sorry for her, huh?) That will take you to ZOE.

3. Click on the yellow box that says VOTE!

4. Notify all of your friends, neighbors, family members, the folks at church or temple or mosque or other house of faith, the rest of the PTA, the people at the firehouse, everyone in your classroom, and tell them all pretty, pretty please with a headful of unruly red hair, PLEASE VOTE FOR ZOE.

5. Do this every day until the end of October.

TOMORROW: ANOTHER WRITER BORN IN OCTOBER!

DAY 8 OF THE ZOE VOTE – THE GREAT COVER CONTROVERSY

Thank you, Queen Louise for doing such a great job filling in yesterday. (I was off conducting cooking experiments under conditions that sort of simulated the Valley Forge encampment in December 1777.)

Zoe continues to be in the running for inclusion in a million boxes of Cheerios, but there is bad news.

Other books (which are sweet books, lovely books, but still) are surging ahead. ::cues threatening music:: This is not a winner-takes-all competition. The top FIVE books will be put in Cheerios boxes for eager breakfast readers. (For the record, the authors and illustrators will not see any royalties from these cereal books. It’s just wicked cool and fun.)

::threatening music again:: Zoe has slipped to fifth place. SHE NEEDS YOUR VOTE. (see below the photos for details)

I mentioned a couple of days ago that authors generally get to see early sketches.

They are just to give everyone a rough sense of the illustrator’s ideas.

Don’t know if you can see it, but I changed some of my text based on Ard’s work.

After the sketches, Ard went back and painted. The author gets to see the early page proofs, too.

One of my favorite things Ard did was to add in a group of gerbils who act like a visual Greek chorus during Zoe’s saga.

  (I couldn’t figure out how to rotate this photo – sorry!) Originally the cover’s background color was white. Then there were MANY discussions at Simon & Schuster. The concern was that less-than-perfectly-clean hands would smudge up the white cover in a hurry. In the end, the powers that be – and Ard, I think – chose the lilac shade.

OK, dear friends. Warm up your clicking finger. Do a couple of jumping jacks. IT’S TIME TO VOTE!!!

HOW TO VOTE:

1. Go to the voting page.

2. In the bottom right corner, click on MORE BOOKS twice. (Yes, this is the tricky part. No, I don’t know why Zoe is buried at the absolute back of the pack. Kind of makes you feel sorry for her, huh?) That will take you to ZOE.

3. Click on the yellow box that says VOTE!

4. Notify all of your friends, neighbors, family members, the folks at church or temple or mosque or other house of faith, the rest of the PTA, the people at the firehouse, everyone in your classroom, and tell them all pretty, pretty please with a headful of unruly red hair, PLEASE VOTE FOR ZOE.

5. Do this every day until the end of October.

TOMORROW IS MY BIRTHDAY!!! WANT TO GIVE ME A PRESENT? VOTE FOR ZOE TODAY!

Day 7 of The Zoe Vote – The Amazing Ard Hoyt!!

Update on The Zoe Vote:  I, Queen Louise, just voted!  Have you???  When I did, I noticed that our Zoe Girl is still in fourth place, BUT she has 11% of the vote.  Please, Please, Please, after you read Ard Hoyt’s comments about making Zoe come to life on the page… VOTE!!!  (the instructions are below for those of you just joining us!)

                                                                                              

Recently, Laurie asked Ard Hoyt, illustrator of THE HAIR OF ZOE FLEEFENBACHER GOES TO SCHOOL, to comment on his experience with Zoe.  He wrote:

        I always knew she was special.  I have a dear friend who also happens to be my 90 year old Grandmother LaPreal.  She and I have kindred spirits and became close when I had the privilege of living with her and Grandpa Wayne for a time during college.  She told me stories about her life with such feeling that I tell you, I felt like I lived it with her.  Thanks to her I got to know my own Grandfather Ard who died before I was born.  Well she is a character and has reddish hair and when I told her I wanted to dedicate a book to her sometime, she asked if I would dedicate a special story with a red headed girl to her.   I waited a long time for Zoe Laurie, and when I read your text I knew that I had found just the book for my special friend. 

Each book that I have worked on has appealed to me emotionally first.  As I read your text again and again thinking about visually telling this story, I could feel Zoe’s eagerness to please and her hair’s unwillingness to cooperate.  I could almost see that little pensive face on the cover, wondering what those locks were going to do next. 

With that in mind I drew this …. and fell in love with Zoe. 

The rest of the images sprang to life once I knew her.  There was some push back on my original Ms. Trisk who I recall being older with a beehive that was way too expected.  A great catch by our editor Kevin Lewis and designer Jessica Sonkin who both told me to update and modernize her a bit.  I drew feverishly trying to find her but was frustrated until the day I saw a woman in a "power suit" wearing a necktie without a collared shirt and I thought…"ooooo, hello Ms. Trisk."

The wild hair antics were so fun to imagine.  The "Big Mistake" Tyranosaur hair is probably my favorite.

Anyway I had a blast breaking the rules at school with Zoe’s Hair.  The story really told itself to me visually and I was proud to bring it to view. 

As Laurie wrote in her note to Ard, "Thank you again a million bazillion times for making our girl so fabulous!!!!" 

And now, the time has come…  for you to VOTE and for me, Queen Louise, to beg, plead and, well, you get the idea.  I can grovel just as good, if not better, than Laurie!  Although, she does do a really good pouty face!  (I won’t "pull rank" and order you to vote, either; but it would be nice.)  So here you go…. be sure to share this information with your doctor’s office (dentist, too!), your child’s boy scout leader, your child’s dance instructor…EVERYONE YOU KNOW!

For those of you who are new to our game, here are your voting instructions:

HOW TO VOTE:

1. Go to the voting page.

2. In the bottom right corner, click on MORE BOOKS twice. (Yes, this is the tricky part. No, I don’t know why Zoe is buried at the absolute back of the pack. Kind of makes you feel sorry for her, huh?) That will take you to ZOE.

3. Click on the yellow box that says VOTE!

4. Notify all of your friends, neighbors, family members, the folks at church or temple or mosque or other house of faith, the rest of the PTA, the people at the firehouse, everyone in your classroom, and tell them all pretty, pretty please with a headful of unruly red hair, PLEASE VOTE FOR ZOE.

5. Do this every day until the end of October.


Tomorrow:  Well, I don’t really know. I do have to go to work in the Forest, probably file some paperwork, let the Creature with Fangs out… OH!  That’s right, this section isn’t about ME; it’s about Zoe!  How silly.  I don’t really know what Laurie has planned for Zoe tomorrow, but I can bet it will be very interesting.. come back tomorrow and see!  I order Thee….